Wednesday, December 29, 2010

inside my broken heart is a pocket for you

about honesty:

for convenience's sake, the truth is malleable.

Sunday, December 26, 2010


determined to bloom, these buds.


dialogging | take 2

The maker of saintly questions:
Ayushma, tell me, truly and honestly, what your greatest tragedy is.

Me:
Men seem to fall in love with me all the time. Only I seem to be unable to love them back. Not even one.

The maker of saintly questions:
Yes, I thought as much.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

today I feel sadness in my body

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

dialogging

The maker of saintly questions:
Ayushma, what do you think is your greatest tragedy?

Me:
I always seem to fall in love with men who don't know how to love me back.

The maker of saintly questions:
And what do you think has been your greatest success?

Me:
I also seem to fall in love with everything else that seems to know exactly how.

L Cohen does me a personal favour

Thousands

Out of the thousands
who are known,
or who want to be known
as poets,
maybe one or two
are genuine
and the rest are fakes,
hanging around the sacred precincts
trying to look like the real thing.
Needless to say
I am one of the fakes,
and this is my story.

by L Cohen


Thanks to you, I don't have to write that poem full of fake musings on how I want to be a real poet.


getting ready to sleep

cold newspapers lie on my bed.

news is crashing and burning and killing and looting
negotiating, compromising,
commercializing, politicizing,
hypocritizing, and occasionally superficially celebrating
me.

stealing warmth from under the covers,
cold newspapers are unfit for this december day.

somebody tell them to stop manufacturing news!

untitled

we, too, took a bite out of the forbidden fruit...













...this came of it.

oh kid me not!

when i say a day is
dull,
wet,
gloomy,
blue,
cold,
cruel,
infuriatingly unfair,

am i simply looking away from the sun?


traveling in circles

everyday on this beaten path
life is losing innocence that cannot be regained

life is coming to multiple awarenesses of truth after truth
that define and redefine the ugly, the horrid
often within you

life is living out the daily fear
of knowing that the person you love most
will never understand you entirely

life is growing old in your soul
before it begins to show on your skin and in your bones

life is learning of all that you'd hate in yourself
and not knowing how to hate yourself
it is ultimately learning how to embrace

life is, above all, living through your days
thinking innocence lost can never be regained
and finding it at the doorsteps of death

life is a hurt; a pinch, a pain
we fuss, we crib, we curse, we pine

but innocence lost is always regained
in a way that feels just right.

Monday, December 20, 2010

We are stupid.
And although we see it,
We like to forget.
And in our neglect
it grows.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

komawa

yummmm!
the friendship of flowerpots and sunlight and wooden tables and naughty muffins.

yummmm!
the friendship of you and I somewhere amidst theirs, talking, talking, talking.

Friday, December 10, 2010

envy at 4 52 a.m.

I open the book
Not expecting a sword.

Centered around the body
Your poetry intact, whole
I engulf every word.

I close the book
Not before I'm sliced in two.

Stranger, is it not strange
how eventually you spill out of me?

only you

special is that otherworldly category
that everyone is entitled to.

in my head, i'm always making exceptions though.


one for you two

"We walked through the night in couplets."

story of fish

for 35 days
i have been spooning air to a fish

gagging, fish says to me, thank you very much, my dear
but i'm a fish
and it is not my wish
to be fed air
it would be fair
if it were water you put in my dish

agonizing, i think to myself, i'm crashing against my fear
i'm a bird
and it's my thirst
to burst
this fishy bubble
to turn her gills
into something loveable

for 35 days
i have been teaching myself to swim

flapping, soaked wings
please no one

no, air saves no life
no, water lubricates no soul

all builds up to strife
all disintegrates into foul

Yusuf the cat

Yusuf the cat dashed into my brain
This odd nighttime meow meow of a cat
shaves the edges of my brain
to show to me an aberration of the norm
of things having a beginning and an end

Round and round it goes in circles
without beginning nor end
without meaning nor purpose
existing, still

Brown eyes churn out an emotional mill
This delightful daytime mia mia of a girl
Sends my hair into quiet giggles

A little window opens
In flows a girl
Out flows a cat

Yusuf the cat
Sends me into shots of enlightenment
The high lows
and the low tides

Makes me say things I couldn't have dreamt of thinking
Takes me into worlds that disappear under the eyelids
Wakes me up to life
Wakes me up to life

I dreamt up thinking
Of a mia mia girl
With giggles for hair

Blue eyes stare out the ocean
Baby blue eyes
Brown ones cry
Bold brown ones

Cry looking for love
looking in
and finding out

Leave the window open
Watch it grow
As what flows out
Brings in more.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

love is not the fulfillment of your expectations.